Reviews for Kingwin Black 3.5 SATA Aluminum External Hard Drive Enclosure Kingwin Black 3.5 SATA Aluminum External Hard Drive Enclosure

Kingwin Black 3.5 SATA Aluminum External Hard Drive...

Strengths: Cheap (ie: super affordable)

Weakness: can only use un-sheilded internal sata cables from what I can tell...supposedly making it sensitive to static eletricity... possibly resulting in data loss.

Cable is red like an internal sata cable and does not seem to be shielded (ie: I believe it is simply an internal sata cable). The enclosure also won't accept a shielded sata cable of any sort because the slot on the back of the enclosure is only wide enough for the slim internal type. I discovered this after I bought an external shielded sata cable to replace the internal (frustrating to say the least). This tells me why it's so cheap. The whole "you need to have a shielded cable" could just be a mostly marketing thing... but I don't take chances with my data.
While the unit has worked fine so far with the internal looking cable, I plan to return it for something that has or will take and external cable (note: I'm not talking about the newer straight external sata cable head when I say it won't fit... Everything I'm working with here either is the "L" shaped connector, or accepts the "L" shaped connector.
Also, the enclosure feels cheap... though that doesn't really bother me at all since it was so affordable.

Please don't miss the fact that it has worked fine so far despite the unshielded cable it must use... but like unprotected sex, everything will seem fine until something bad happens!

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Kingwin Black 3.5 SATA Aluminum External Hard Drive...

Strengths: SATA support

Weakness: See comments

Only side panels of enclosure are actually aluminum. Interior connection were loose, had to replug them enclosure to start to work. Hard drive activity led is always on no matter is it in work or not. Works OK with 80GB SATA drive, connected through external bracket of asus motherboard. Speed is OK.

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Worked for a month...

Strengths: Cheap price

Weakness: Crappy power supply.

This unit is all aluminum, but it is cheap. It worked for me for about a month then the power supply died. Wrote to Kingwin to try to get this resolved, but no response from them.

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By member: Mr Gerry - Feb 18, 2007

Horrible Enclosure

Strengths: Cheap price, stackable

Weakness: Read comments

I bought 3 of these cases while in Iraq for 3 WD320 hard drives. All 3 hard drives work like a charm, all three cases are absolute garbage. This enclosure cuts corners by not having USB or Firewire. Instead it has a SATA connector, but one that cannot have shielded SATA cables connected to it. Fortunately I had plenty of spare cables, so I shaved the ends with a knife and they fit now. About 2 months into having 3 of these cases, 1 crapped out on me. Any hard drive I put in there fails to be recognized, and fresh unmodified SATA cables were no help either. Fast foward to now, 8 months into owning the enclosures, 2 of the fans died and the surviving fan makes more noise then the computer its connected to. The build quality these cases is garbage and I would highly suggest you avoid these at all costs.

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SATA Enclosure

Strengths: Solid mounting, cooling fan alarm

The enclosure is a good solid enclosure. The drive screw mounts directly to the side of the enclosure. The enclosure is slightly oversized to promote good cooling and easily fit most drives. The fan is very quiet and has an alarm in case it fails, very handy. The large sides are thick aluminum for protection, while the perimeter walls are thin and ribbed for cooling.

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Good enclosure

Strengths: stackable design, compact size

Weakness: fan power is a little bit low

Stactable design save a lot of space and looks neat. I used two of them to built a raid drive since my computer tower is small. Since it is not USB of firewire interface, you may not use this enclusure for data transport between computers.

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